Many of us will also find it hard to abandon our belief that in
man himself there dwells an impulse towards perfection,
which has brought him to his present heights of intellectual
prowess and ethical sublimation, and from which it might be
expected that his development into superman will be
ensured. But I do not believe in the existence of such an
inner impulse, and I see no way of preserving this pleasing
illusion. The development of man up to now does not seem
to me to need any explanation differing from that of animal
development, and the restless striving towards further
perfection which may be observed in a minority of human
beings is easily explicable as the result of that repression of
instinct upon which what is most valuable in human culture
is built. The repressed instinct never ceases to strive after its
complete satisfaction which would consist in the repetition of a primary experience of satisfaction: all substitution- or
reaction-formations and sublimations avail nothing towards
relaxing the continual tension; and out of the excess of the
satisfaction demanded over that found is born the driving
momentum which allows of no abiding in any situation
presented to it, but in the poet‘s words ‗urges ever forward,
ever unsubdued‘ (Mephisto in ‗Faust‘, Act i. Faust‘s study.).
The path in the other direction, back to complete
satisfaction, is as a rule barred by the resistances that
maintain the repressions, and thus there remains nothing for
it but to proceed in the other, still unobstructed direction,
that of development, without, however, any prospect of
being able to bring the process to a conclusion or to attain
the goal. What occurs in the development of a neurotic
phobia, which is really nothing but an attempt at flight from
the satisfaction of an instinct, gives us the prototype for the
origin of this ostensible ‗impulse towards perfection‘ which,
however, we cannot possibly ascribe to all human beings.
The dynamic conditions are, it is true, quite generally
present, but the economic relations seem only in rare cases
to favour the phenomenon.